


Happy Halloween

by nagi_schwarz



Series: The Oppenheimer Effect [7]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: AU, M/M, tw: PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-04
Updated: 2016-05-04
Packaged: 2018-06-06 10:12:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6749380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the comment_fic prompt: Any, any, Elementary/high school teachers.</p><p>Halloween at Memorial High School.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Happy Halloween

John wasn’t a particularly festive person, but he knew that holidays were some of the few events in a given year that his students looked forward to, if only for the potential parties and booze and sexytimes they anticipated. He also knew they looked at holidays like Halloween as a chance to let loose, enjoy some extra freedom, explore parts of themselves they usually kept buttoned up and hidden away, because they could do that Halloween. Thanksgiving was a reminder that there was nothing to be thankful for, a reminder of how hungry they were, and Christmas was a time for charity accepted through gritted teeth and battered pride.

Halloween, though, that was the holiday John’s students loved. So he, Evan, Cam, and JD went the extra mile to make Halloween fun in all of their classrooms. Evan let the kids carve pumpkins as an art project. Cam had them help him design and build some of the trapdoors and tricks for the school’s annual haunted house fundraiser (which had started raising a lot more money now that Cam was designing things). John decorated his classroom with bats and pumpkins and witches, and he also put a giant jar full of Reese’s Pieces on his desk (they came in Halloween colors) and whoever could guess how many were in the jar (John and his housemates had counted them out painstakingly) won them after Halloween. He was always impressed with how close his students came.

Students were encouraged to dress up, so long as their costumes were appropriate and met with school dress codes, although masks weren’t allowed. Not that the kids didn’t get to make cheap little paper domino-esque masks in some of their classes - including Evan’s - on Halloween itself to wear to the big Halloween dance that happened on the last night of the haunted house. The teachers could dress up, too, and Principal Connor encouraged everyone on staff to join in. Cam dressed up as a space pirate in some kind of fancy leather get-up with fake guns, rolled around the halls with his chair decked out as some kind of space ship. Evan dressed up as a sheriff’s deputy. JD dressed up as a young Indiana Jones every year (which John now understood was an inside joke based on his old friendship with Daniel Jackson, an archaeologist). And John...was dressed as Spock (which really only made him even more self-conscious about his ears) because Rodney was dressed as Kirk, and after the dance they would be going to the Halloween party that Sam Carter was hosting.

As a result, John had to spend most of the day fending off _live long and prosper_ jokes, but he didn’t mind, because his kids were smiling, and life was all right. There hadn’t been any fights in the halls, any suicide attempts, or new pregnancy scares, and that meant life at Memorial High was all right.

Evan stopped by his classroom right before lunch to ask about the schedule for that night. John was technically on chaperone duty, but since he was going to another party, Evan was going to cover the last hour of chaperoning and also party clean-up. What time did John want Evan to come by?

John fired up his cell phone, flipped through his calendar to see where Sam’s party was actually being held - not at her house, too many people - and how long it would take to get there.

There was a roar, and John jumped, startled. A student stood in the doorway, wearing rustic clothes and green body paint and some kind of weird lizard mask.

“Hey,” John said, “you know the rules, no masks.” But he recognized the kid - Tyler, who was usually nervous and a little nosy and had apparently one time given Rodney a near heart-attack by insinuating that John was cheating on Rodney with a woman...named Meredith.

Tyler tipped the mask back. “Sorry, Shep. Couldn’t resist.” He grinned. Then he paused. “Mr. Lorne? Are you all right?”

Evan had gone completely pale, gaze distant.

John stepped toward him. “Evan?”

And then Evan moved, grabbed John by the shoulders and threw him to the ground.

“Hey, ow!” John landed hard, rolled, tried to get onto his feet, but Evan threw over the three nearest desks, forming a barricade, and caught John’s arm, pulled him back down.

“Stay still,” he breathed, “and don’t move. I think they can smell us, but if we hold real still -”

“Shep! Are you okay?” Tyler started toward them.

Evan surged up over the barricade and plowed into Tyler, pinned him to the wall.

“Run!” he shouted to John. “Go, get back to the gate!”

 _Gate_. Oh, shit.

Tyler cried out and squirmed. “Mr. Lorne, what are you doing? Let me go!”

“Evan,” John said, “Evan, that’s Tyler, one of our students. You need to let him go. You’re safe.”

“This one’s a juvenile, but that means adults are nearby,” Evan said. “You have to go. Please.”

Tyler whimpered. “You’re hurting me.”

There was only one thing to do. John caught Evan off guard, wrenched him off of Tyler and threw him to the ground, was on him and pinning him in an instant.

“Tyler, run, get JD and Cam, go!”

Tyler huddled against the door, coughing and gasping for air. “Shep, what -”

“I said go!”

“What the hell are you doing?” Evan thrashed. “You’re letting it get away! It’ll call the adults. We have to get out of here. Get offa me! They’ll eat us alive. You saw what they did to Ritter. We’re next.”

John struggled to pin him down. “Evan, no, you’re safe, you’re -” He lowered his voice. “You’re on Earth. There are no aliens. It was just a kid in a costume and a mask, okay? Calm down.”

Tears streamed down Evan’s face. “No, we have to get out of here. If they come back, we’re next. You saw what they did to him. You saw. You saw…”

“What the hell is going on here?” Cam demanded.

“Get Principal Connor,” John said. “He’s having a flashback.”

“Is Mr. Lorne all right?” a student asked.

“Everyone, get the hell out now,” JD said, striding into the room and over the fallen desks.

Some of the students followed Cam as he zoomed down the hall, but some, including Tyler, lingered.

“Get out!” JD snapped, putting some of the old colonel into his voice, and John straightened his spine instinctively.

The kids didn’t understand what they heard, but they scattered.

JD joined John. “I got his hands, you get his legs - you still outweigh me. What happened?”

“Tyler was wearing a mask. Some kind of giant lizard? Evan flipped out. He keeps saying they’re going to eat us. I -”

Evan had been reduced to incoherent babbling, struggling weakly.

“The Unas on P3X-403.” The planet designation tripped off of JD’s tongue as easily as the name of the next town over. “Dammit. I was out on my ass before everything with that mining operation went down.”

“Can you do something? Anything!” John’s throat closed. He’d never seen Evan like this, terrified and laid bare in the face of his own nightmares, gripped by something John couldn’t see or follow or fight. They all had nightmares, would sometimes congregate in the kitchen over tea and cookies to decompress, but their nightmares were their own, especially since Evan's and Cam’s and JD’s were full of classified information.

JD cleared his throat. “Major,” he said.

Evan’s struggles subsided. “Colonel O’Neill?”

“It’s safe now, son.” JD deepened his voice as much as possible, and it was enough for Evan.

“SG-1? They came?”

“We came for you. Come on. On your feet. We need to get back to the gate, have Doc Frasier check you over. You ready?”

Evan took several deep breaths, nodded. JD raised his eyebrows at John, who scrambled off of Evan’s legs and moved to support Evan’s weight from his left, JD at his right.

Principal Connor arrived just as they made it to the door.

“What’s going on? The students are in a panic,” he said.

“PTSD flashback,” JD said. “Shep was able to talk him out of it. We probably need to get him checked by the base doctor.”

Connor nodded tightly. He’d served in Vietnam. “Of course. Take whatever time you need. I’ll find other chaperones for tonight.”

“Thanks.” John and JD managed to get Evan out to the van where Cam was already waiting to drive them all to the Mountain.

“I called ahead,” Cam said. “Let’s go.”

Evan fell asleep on the back seat with his head on JD’s shoulder.

“Happy Halloween,” John said quietly.


End file.
